Andre and Wendy: Cinque Terre Day 1

A beautiful week-end in the forecast and we are so looking forward to our visit to Cinque Terre.

No sleeping in today as we are catching 8AM train and it is about a 20 minutes walk to the train station.

Train station in Lucca

Waiting on the platform for our train to Cinque Terre, we will be here a few more times before we leave Italy!

The train ride from Lucca is nearly 2 hours, not too exciting except the train tickets. We bought the train tickets earlier this week and we knew we had to change trains 2 times. These tickets are crazy, they say your departure town and your arrival town. Nothing about what times the train leaves. Nothing about the 2 changes of trains we knew we had to do. We went online and wrote down all the changes we needed, I have no idea what we would have done had we not looked that up. I guess it is easy if you do the same route all the time, but how do you know what cites to get off to change as a tourist?

Along the way we pass by the town of Carrara where we can see the stockpile of marble slabs and blocks. Ancient Rome use Carrara marble and many of the Renaissance statues were carved from it.

Carrara - Lots of marble

First sign of water!

We bought tickets all the way to Vernazza, which is the town in Cinque Terre where we will be spending the night. Our final train change was in La Spieza, which is kind of the jumping off point to Cinque Terre. In La Spieza there was a huge line for people wanting to buy these cards that give you unlimited train pass and a couple of other things I think. Anyway way too long a line for us so we decided we’d figure it out when we got to Vernazza since I read there was tourist info at all villages in Cinque Terre.

As you can probably tell from the name Cinque Terre is made up of 5 small villages along the Italian Riviera. In our world of Arundel and Grand Barachois they are big, but in the outside world they are quite small. Tourism seems to be for sure the main income, with some fishing, grapes and olive trees as well. It is a very popular day trip destination, but to do it any justice we really wanted to stay one night, and we could have stayed longer.

Arrived in Vernazza to the most unhelpful tourist info guy ever. Got a map from him and basically just left, we’ll figure it out somehow. I called the lady we had booked the hotel room with, she was cleaning our room then and said we could check in. Asked for directions, find the pharmacy on the left start climbing the stairs. Yep, 77 stairs up and we see the sign for our room. This was great, we had packed very lightly but it was nice to be able to leave everything in the room except for camera gear.

Getting off the train in Vernazza, whenever you get off the train there is a bit of a crowd going into town, but we all quickly disperse

View from our terrace in Vernazza

I am taking a picture, must be a nice view!

We then asked about which hiking trails were open, since the info person told us all the popular “easy” blue trails were closed. Note, the online maps for Cinque Terre also said all blue trails were closed. Elisabetta said, no go walk to Corniglia it is very pretty, it is open. Luckily our room is right on the trail, so she showed us what the markers look like and off we went. We walked about 5 minutes and came across a bar that we bought some water for the walk. Beautiful view of the town from here.

View of Vernazza on the walk to Corniglia

Another 5 minutes and we came across a sign that maybe it was closed? There is a hut here that in high season they check to see if you have a pass for the walk, no one here at this time, and we can’t exactly translate the sign so we trust Elisabetta is right and off we go. Another family come up behind us when we are stopped taking pictures, and we all decide together it must be OK to hike. As we go along we do see quite a few more people, so was it officially open or closed, we’ll never know.

Many of the tourists we met along the trail were from France, it was fun to guess the language, so we say hello in English, French, or Italian?

This hike took us 2 hours, many steps, which was the norm for the weekend we will find out. If you don’t like steps Cinque Terre is not for you! Corniglia is the only village that is not on the sea, but still a pretty town. It is a very pretty hike here, with lots of great views of both towns. There are signs along the way that tells what route you are on and the elevation. We climbed from sea level to about 200 meters.

I did have a fall at one point, but all is good, just didn’t see a hidden rock when I took a shortcut to avoid some steps.

You can see the hiking trail we are following along the mountain, also villages in the background

These nets would be spread on the ground in harvest season for the olives

This little funicular thing has tracks up and down the mountain that is used to transport the grapes and olives I guess

Village of Corniglia, only town not directly on the water in Cinque Terre

Beautiful view from this town as you are still elevated from sea level. Andre decided to climb the extra 50 steps to visit this small church and take in the view from behind it.

I just told Andre I didn't remember seeing this Church, he told me I didn't climb the 50 steps to go and look!

The problem with doing these hikes is when you arrive into town you are not really sure where to go from there, unless you are one of the tourists that have a guide book with you, which of course we did not have! We decided we’d tackle 2 more towns today by taking the train. Found where to catch the train, and it is 345 steps to get down to the train station! There is a shuttle bus, but others were waiting with young kids and whats another 345 stairs when we’re already done about a million today! There is a train that connects all the towns, the only thing you need to do is make sure you get on going in the right direction, being that the sea is always on the same side helps! Another thing with it being off season the trains only go by once an hour, so a little timing is needed here too. We did wait a couple of times today, but not too difficult to sit and look over the water for a bit!

345 steps down to the train station in Carniglia

Guy selling tickets at the train station

We've seen some crazy pictures of train stations in busy season, we didn't need to worry today!

So we eventually found the train station in Corniglia and took the train to Manarola. This is a very cute town right on the water. Being off season in all towns there are only a few restaurants, and it being such a beautiful week-end everywhere is busy. We did get into a great spot with a view of the water for some delicious panini sandwiches. Not sure if they were so delicious or we were so hungry!

Manarola - very cute small village on the water

Manarola

Next off we got a train to Riomaggiore, which is the first town when you enter Cinque Terre from the direction we came from. We really only did a quick walk around this town, we were getting tired and our terrace was calling us for a glass of wine and some relaxing.

Riomaggiore

Shingles out for drying

Fisherman relaxing

Caught the train back from Riomaggiore to Vernazza, which is maybe 15 minutes, the towns are really close together. There is now one less pigeon here as well, Andre witnessed a pigeon get taken out by a train, I thought the train hit a Kleenex or something, but it was feathers flying all over and Andre ducked as he thought he was going to get hit by the pigeon. So, one dead pigeon on the platform for all new arriving tourists to see.

Back in Vernazza, we do a quick walk to the water. Not much activity going on.

Back to Vernazza again for the night

Picked up a bottle of wine and headed back to our room. It is so windy tonight, but we were able to escape the wind but sitting right against the wall, and a great evening for some sunset shots.

Another shot from our terrace

Sunset from our terrace

Lots of photographers up above us for the sunset

We found a restaurant that our friends Lucie and Dan were in last week, but it was full so we moved on to another place and had good seafood spaghetti. The seafood was just mussels and clams, but still yummy.

An early night tonight, we have lots of plans for tomorrow after speaking to our waiter here and he tells us the blue trail is also open going the other direction towards Monterosso, best tourist info is not from tourist info!

Another visit to the waterfront for a few nighttime pictures of the village/town.

So quiet at night when all the day trippers are gone

There was a little tunnel through the rocks here that you could go to a beach that we didn’t do earlier today. It was really low tide tonight so we went through, it was a gorgeous night, so many bright stars!

Great star gazing from the beach

We had a lovely place to stay. The stairs are a bit suicidal. Very narrow steps and the top is also the entrance from the balcony. You actually need to take a pretty good step when you come in from outside. The bathroom was recently redone and was beautiful and the bed super comfy as compared to the one in Lucca.